Hello!
Thank you all for the idioms you sent in to the Editor’s Corner contest. I received over 400 idioms, so I will share them with you over the months to come. Just a few things I noticed about them in general:
· A lot of idioms focused on animals (especially cats and monkeys).
· Many idioms focused on weather.
· There are quite a few ways to call people “stupid” without using that word.
· The southern states are a hotbed of idiomatic phrases.
· Some of you aren’t really clear on what’s too naughty for work (but I certainly had a few laughs).
· Some of you aren’t really clear on what an idiom is (but I gave you points anyway).
Okay, so let’s get to our winners and the prizes:
· Mary Fleenor (Anguished English)
· Carolin Hopkins (Anguished English)
· Jamie Roller (More Anguished English)
· Scott Murray (American Trivia book)
· Herman Piete (T-shirt, “I’m silently correcting your grammar”)
And now, a definition from Google:
idiom: a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words (e.g., rain cats and dogs, see the light).
Our first idioms are just of few of the ones I received relating to animals. Enjoy!
| Idiom | Meaning |
| Kill two birds with one stone | Get two things done simultaneously |
| As blind as a bat | Can’t see a thing |
| Cooler than a polar bear’s toenails | Really slick |
| As the crow flies | In a straight line; the shortest distance between two places |
| Have a bee in one’s bonnet | Obsessed with a topic and can’t stop talking or thinking about it
To be involved with something you think is important in a way that others find it bothersome Upset or angry about something |
| I’m as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs | Extremely nervous and jumpy
[KC] This was one of the most common ones I received, though I’d never heard it. |
| On it like a duck on a June bug | I’ll get to it immediately and with great determination |
| Let the cat out of the bag | Reveal a secret by accident |
| They’re sharper than a sack of wet mice. | Mentally challenged |
| Naked as a jaybird | Bare naked; unclothed |
| Birds of a feather flock together | People with similar interests (or similar people) tend to associate with each other. |
| You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink | You can give someone an opportunity, but you can’t force them to take it. |
| Heard it straight from the horse’s mouth | From the person directly concerned or another authoritative source |
| A little birdie told me | A phrase used in place of someone’s name
Something said when you don’t want to divulge the name of the source |
| Let sleeping dogs lie | Don’t instigate trouble; don’t talk about things that have started problems in the past |
Kara Church
Technical Editor, Advisory
Symitar Documentation Services
Editor's Corner 
I always love to learn idioms and they are always interesting and amusing because of their symbolic meanings but some idioms are really tough to understand. Wonderful post, keep it up.
Freya, UK
By: Idioms.in on December 28, 2016
at 8:46 am